Iron River Page 2

  Once I asked Danny if his brother Raul ever bought a new car. Raul is Danny’s oldest brother if you don’t count Joaquín who was killed in Korea. You probably heard of Raul Valdez. He pitches for the Chicago White Sox. All of Sangra is proud of him because he made it to the big leagues. When the Sox come to California for spring training, Raul spends most of his free time with his family. When he comes to San Gabriel, the whole city—even the white people—follows him around town. Danny says even though Raul has the money to sleep in fancy hotels, he likes to stay at home because he misses his family and there’s no Mexican food as good as his mom’s.

  Danny said Raul bought a new T-Bird last summer, but he keeps it in Chicago where he lives.

  In that movie Dangerous Playground, a little white girl riding the passenger train gets hurt when a boy throws a rock and breaks her window. But it’s fake because that window glass is too thick to break with a little rock. Our rocks just bounce off them.

  Twice a day three times a week, shiny locomotives pull passenger trains east and west. The east-current trains pass at around nine in the morning and the west around five in the afternoon. It’s always fun to stand on the rightaway and wave to the people. It’s always pure white people looking out the windows. Sometimes they wave back.

  Melinda Collison’s father is a porter on those trains.

  Not all passengers ride the passenger trains on the SP. Summer or winter you can see bunches of hobos sitting or standing on top of boxcars on their way east or west. Where we live, there’s a bend in the tracks that makes the trains have to slow down. That’s good for us because it’s easier to throw rocks at a slow train. Sometimes the train even stops for a long time when there’s an accident up ahead. It can stand there for over an hour before it starts up again with a big jolt and the sound of four hundred couplers banging together.

  It’s when the train is stopped that the hobos come to Grandma’s.

  3

  I used to run inside the house and hide in the front room when I saw a hobo coming. Soon there would be a soft knock on the door. Grandma would answer it and open the big door while I stood behind her. The hobos would hold their hats in their hands and they’d be real dirty because they get covered in the black smoke the locomotives blow out. Grandma would tell them to wash up at the faucet in the front yard while she went to make them something to eat.

  I know not to unlatch the screen door. Grandma says that’s her protection, but I can’t see how a little metal hook can really stop a man if he wants to go inside.

  The hobos eat Grandma’s sandwiches sitting in what I call the hobo chair on her cool front porch. I’ve even seen some men say grace and bless their food before they ate.

  Grandma usually makes them minced-ham sandwiches or tacos de frijoles. Some carry thermos bottles and Grandma washes them and fills them with coffee while they eat.

  I used to wish I could sit down and talk to them while they were eating. You know, to hear about where they’re going or where they’ve been and what life is like on the rails. But Grandma told me to leave them in peace. Don’t disturb their dignity, she would say. So I settled for just watching them through the venetian blinds in my bedroom.

  When they’re finished, Grandma takes the dirty dish and cup—she always serves them on our dishes and cups. She gives them back their thermos filled with fresh coffee and a couple more sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. The men usually don’t say much, but I heard one or two tell her, “God bless you, ma’am.” After she closes the door she makes the sign of the Cross behind them to bless them on their way. When they get to the street mostly they run across and jump back on the train. But sometimes a hobo will kneel down and make some kind of sign in chalk or charcoal on the sidewalk in front of our house.

  After what happened I don’t go to the door anymore when hobos knock.

  You already know my best friend Danny. Well, besides him, my other best friends are Marco and Little. Marco’s whole name is Marco Antonio Julio César Rivas. He says his mom gave him that name because she thought it was in the Bible somewhere.

  Sister Margaret Mercy—who Marco calls Margaret Murphy—told him his name isn’t in the Bible, but that it comes from Roman history. Marco’s the youngest kid in our gang. I’m almost a year older than him. He’s about the smartest kid I know. He gets straight A’s in school, and he loves to read. He has bookshelves stuffed with books in his front room. Other neighborhood kids tease him and tell him who does he think he is, white?

  I hate that about Sangra. Whenever a person does something good or gets an award for something, they always say, “Who does he think he is?” or “He thinks he’s all good.” I hate it the most when they say, “Who does he think he is, white?” I think that’s part of why my uncle Rudy went back to prison.

  Marco lives at the corner of Main and California where the street makes an L right next to the train tracks. His bed is barely two feet from the rails. He says when the train goes by at night, his house shakes and his bed bucks like a rodeo bronco. The windows rattle so much that his mom stuffs rags tight around them so they won’t break like all the windows on Main Street do. Marco says his mom tells his dad she’s going to divorce him if they don’t move.

  Little’s my last best friend. His real name is Carlos Gutierrez. I’ll tell you about why we call him “Little” later because I need to tell you what happened that made me think I might die before I get old.

  School was out for the summer, but it was a cool day because clouds were blocking the sun. Me and Danny and Little went over Marco’s house to see what we could do. Marco was sitting on his front steps when we got there. Nobody said anything until Danny spoke up.

  “Wanna go to the wash?” Little said.

  Rubio Wash is a storm channel the other side of San Gabriel Boulevard. Cruz told me it starts at the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena. It comes south past our neighborhood then “flows” into the San Gabriel River at the Whittier Narrows. I say “flows” as a joke because there’s usually just a little bit of water in it, which makes it easy to jump over. There are all kinds of things to find down there in the wash: old tires and shopping carts from the Safeway and wooden boards and broken toys and sometimes dead animals. We have to crawl through a long drainage pipe to get to the wash.

  “Nah,” Danny said, “I don’t wanna get dirty.”

  “How about the hobo park?” I said. The hobo park is a clump of bushes and weeds up the tracks where hobos sometimes camp. We’re not allowed to go there. If somebody from Sangra saw us there, they’d call up our mom or grandma and tell them we’re up to no good. The neighborhood is like that. You can’t do anything without people knowing who you are and who your family is and what you’re up to.

  Smith Park’s the real city park. The pool opens the second week of summer, but it’s usually too crowded until after Fourth of July. Plus, the teenage guys hog all the games in the rec room anyway.

  I’m not ever allowed to go to Smith Park by myself at night. At night Smith Park is a dangerous place. That’s where the tecatos hang out. Tecatos is what we call heroin addicts. Cruz calls them “tee-cats.” I know about tee-cats because my uncle Rudy was one.

  Betty doesn’t like me to use that word to describe him.

  We didn’t plan what happened. One minute we heard the horn of the 9:40 freight train coming out of L.A. on an east current, and the next minute we were in Marco’s backyard throwing oranges and lemons at the hobos riding on top of the boxcars. It was a light current, and before I knew it the caboose went by and the tracks were quiet again. We looked at each other kind of in shock because we never did that before—throw fruit at hobos.

  “We better pick up the fruit before my mom comes out,” Marco said. “If she finds out we did this, she’s going to whip me. And then she’s going to tell my dad when he gets home, and he’s going to whip me too.”

  When we got to the tracks, the ballast shoulder was covered with smashed oranges and lemons. Wherever I looked was orange and yel
low and green.

  Marco said, “What are we going to do with all this stuff? We can’t put it back on my trees.”

  We stood there quiet, thinking and thinking.

  “I have an idea,” Little said. “Let’s take it to the pipe and dump it down the wash.”

  “There’s too much to carry,” I said.

  Finally Danny said, “I’ll go get my wagon, and we can load it up. It’s big enough to hold all the fruit.”

  It took about ten minutes to get the smashed fruit into the wagon and drag it to the rightaway. Me and Little pushed and Danny and Marco pulled the Flyer.

  That’s when we saw what looked like a bundle of clothes. It was Little who first realized it was a body. We walked real slow to get close.

  It was a man, a hobo. He was face down on the rightaway. Little pointed at one of the hobo’s arms twisted behind his back in a way people can’t put their arms. His right leg was in a wrong way under him and his foot was missing its shoe.

  “His arm’s broke nearly off,” Little said.

  Danny’s eyes were filling with tears.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  Little said, “We killed him.”

  Marco turned to Little. “One of us did.”

  “Who hit him?” I tried to remember every fruit I threw.

  Little was serious. “If we don’t know who did it, they’ll put all of us in prison.”

  “Do they send little kids to prison?” Marco asked Little. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

  “Juvvie,” said Little. “At least till we turn eighteen.”

  We stared at the body. I bit my thumbnail. It tasted like lemon. “Maybe we can take him to the wash.”

  It got real quiet. Even the cars stopped crossing the tracks. A crow on the telephone wires squawked over us, and we jumped. We all looked at the wagon loaded with smashed fruit. We would have to dump it to load in the smashed man.

  “We need to call the cops,” Marco said real quiet. He was right. “I’ll be back. Wait for me and don’t touch him.”

  I told Little and Danny, “I didn’t really mean I wanted to dump him in the wash.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t do that when it came down to it,” Little said.

  I looked down at the dead man again. He was wearing farmer’s overalls and a jacket that goes to a suit. The hand of his broken arm was the color of ashes. His hair was brown and gray in places and greasy-looking. The foot that had a shoe was wearing a worn-out brown boot.

  “¡Ay, Dios mío! What did you boys do now?”

  I turned and saw Marco walking toward us with his mom at his side. She was wearing a flowery yellow apron that didn’t go with her dark green dress, and she was wiping her hands on the bottom of the apron. Her face was all pulled together. When we got out of the way and she saw the hobo’s body, she stopped cold like she walked into a wall. She covered her mouth with her hands. She looked at the wagon and the smashed fruit.

  None of us answered.

  “I called the police, and they will be here soon. Did you touch it?”

  “No,” Danny answered. His tear tracks were clean streaks down his dusty face.

  I expected to hear a bunch of sirens, but only one police car drove up on the rightaway from San Gabriel Boulevard. It started coming toward us. The car stopped in back of the hobo’s body and a cloud of dust blew over him. After a long time, the driver’s door opened and a policeman climbed out slow.

  My heart sank to my stomach. His last name is Turkness, but Sangra calls him Turco. The Turk. We knew that he had it in for Mexicans so steer clear of him. He did whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted and got away with it.

  The Turk stood with his hands on his gun belt and looked down at the hobo, then over at us. He was squinting in the dusty light. He went to his car and came back wearing his hat and sunglasses. He looked even scarier with the glasses on. He turned his head without moving his neck like owls do. I knew he was looking at the wagon full of smashed fruit.

  He walked over to the body and squatted down. He lifted the hobo’s shoulder, tipping the body so he could see underneath. He let it drop back down. Without standing up or looking at us, he said, “What happened here?”

  We stood quiet.

  “I said, what happened here?” The Turk’s voice was deeper than my dad’s and echoed inside itself.

  “We were throwing fruits at the train,” Little answered.

  “That’s against the law. You boys should know that.” We knew.

  The Turk got up and stood staring at us for a long time. I wanted him to hurry so whatever punishment was coming would come fast, and we could get it over with. He turned and walked back to his car and pulled out the radio handset. He looked at us when he talked into the radio. There was loud static and a voice over the radio said something. The Turk hung up and came back to us holding a sheet of paper.

  “Are you their mother?” he asked Mrs. Rivas. She pulled Marco so his back was against her and she put her arms over his chest.

  “Only this one is mine.”

  The Turk turned to me.

  “You speak English?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned his head to Little.

  “You?”

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “All you boys read and write English?”

  We nodded without saying anything. He handed the paper to Mrs. Rivas.

  “Where do you live?”

  Mrs. Rivas pointed to her house. We turned to see her backyard. Her fruit trees were naked.

  “Take the boys to your house and have them fill out that sheet. Names and addresses.” He pointed at the paper. “When the meat wagon gets here, I’ll come for it.”

  Mrs. Rivas steered Marco toward their house. Danny and Little and me followed.

  I had to stay in the front room the rest of the day. Grandma wouldn’t let me watch television. She said she’d talk to my dad when he got home and to stay put until he did. Then finally I could get punished—and that would be that—until the cops came for me.

  My mind wouldn’t slow down. Everything that happened that morning ran through my brain a hundred miles an hour, like a freight train on a fast current.

  I tried to think about other things. I listened to my Grandma in the kitchen cleaning the supper beans. I heard them rattle into the metal pot on the seat of the kitchen chair when she swept them off the table with her hand. They made a sound like the rocks we dropped into the Flyer. Now I could hear the big pot bubbling on the stove.

  I was staring out the screen door when Dad’s car pulled into the driveway. In a minute, I heard Mom and Dad talking to Grandma. It was all too low for me to understand. All I could hear was the rumble of Dad’s voice. That rumbly voice usually meant trouble.

  I was still staring out the screen door when I felt my dad’s strong hand on my shoulder. He turned me around. He was squatting down like the Turk. I was eye to eye with him. His blue eyes shined with the light coming through the screen door. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red. They looked tired and sad.

  “What happened, son?”

  Jeez, I did pretty good not to cry all day like Danny and Marco. But now in front of my dad—seeing his look—I just couldn’t hold it back anymore. My eyes blew up. My tears burned. I wrapped my arms around my dad’s neck and pressed my face against his. I didn’t care if his cheek scraped my face and made it sting.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.” My heart wanted to break in half.

  He put his arms around me and pulled away from me—real slow—so he could see my face.

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  4

  It was past supper by the time I finished telling Dad about the fruit and the hobo and the Turk. Grandma kept our dinner hot. Me and Dad ate in the kitchen alone. We didn’t talk.

  After supper I sat by myself in the bedroom I shared with Cruz, going over and over what happened on the rightaway. I never saw a dead person before except Grandpa in his co
ffin.

  Grandma knocked on the door and told me to come to her room and pray the rosary with her for the intention of the dead hobo. Grandma prays the rosary every night at eight o’clock. It comes on the radio in Spanish. Some priest says the Dios Te Salve, Marías, and a group of old Mexican ladies say the Santa Marías. I usually do everything I can to get out of praying the rosary, but this time I thought I better.

  When I got to her room, Grandma was already kneeling next to her bed with her crystal rosary in her wrinkly hands. I kneeled next to her. She handed me the rosary with black beads that used to belong to Grandpa. I don’t think he used it much because it was still pretty shiny and new looking. The crystal beads of Grandma’s were dull. Even the silver links between the beads were black and dull from being used over and over again.

  Next to Grandma’s bed on top of her dresser is a big glass case where she keeps her santos. There must be fifty statues of different saints and a few of Baby Jesus in rich costumes like the Santo Niño de Atocha. Her favorite saint is Martin of Tours. She has a picture of him on the wall next to the saints’ case and one on the kitchen calendar from La Princesa Market.

  Martin of Tours is a Roman soldier sitting on a horse. In front of him is an old man sitting on the ground naked except for a white towel covering his you-know-what. In the picture, Saint Martin is cutting his red cape in half with his sword.

  At the front of the case, there’s a small statue of Saint Sebastian tied to a tree with arrows sticking out of him. I’m not too crazy about Sebastian because the statue has kind of a girl’s face and Sebastian is standing all like a girl, with his hands tied up over his head. I don’t bother praying to him because I figure he knows how I feel about him.

  My favorite is St. Bartholomew. He’s bigger than Sebastian and tied up to a tree too, but big strips of his skin are missing from his chest and legs. You can see the red meat in those spots. One time I asked Sister Francis Assisi why he looked that way and she told me the pagans flayed him: they peeled his skin off while he was still alive.